Belly dancer Zeina performs at Konak.

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Craig LaBan
Philadelphia Inquirer
Published: Sunday, March 7, 2004

There is an evil eye set into the entryway floor at Konak. It peers up from the tile like a big, glassy teardrop ringed by concentric fields of white and deep Aegean blue.

The ancient amulet casts an eerie but mesmerizing gaze meant to keep bad luck at bay. In Istanbul you see it hanging everywhere, in the tiny dolmas buses that putter around town (so packed they are referred to as "stuffed grape leaves"), in the doorways to the Turkish steam baths, and in the rug shop where you inevitably buy
more kilims than you ever intended to acquire.

It never occurred to me to ward off evil spirits in Old City, too, but Konak certainly has them at bay. The four-month-old restaurant has not only given promising new life to a historically unlucky
space, it has also given Old City its one and only satisfying taste
of authentic Turkish cooking.

Set next to the Painted Bride Art Center in a dramatically cavernous
room that once housed Marco's and then a pub called Cecilia's, Konak
has been transformed by owner Ayse Atay and her mother, executive
chef Melek Basaran, into a pleasant hideaway resembling the
courtyard of a Turkish mansion. A balcony nook festooned with rugs and Turkish artifacts overlooks the main dining room. Faux windows dressed with curtains punctuate the tall walls.

Diners sip rustic Turkish wines and potent cups of anise-flavored raki. Friendly servers in richly embroidered vests circle the tables with ornate brass trays bearing gilt-rimmed glass cups filled with apple tea.

It is behind the massive pair of wooden doors at the rear of the
room, however, that the heart of this restaurant lies: the kitchen.
Basaran, who operated Authentic Turkish Restaurant in Voorhees before moving to Old City, prepares an extensive compendium of traditional Turkish cooking. To the unfamiliar, it resembles Greek cuisine, but with a bit more of a Middle Eastern influence.

For starters, I loved the neatly rolled grape leaves, stuffed with gently sweetened rice, sweet onions, and clove-scented Turkish spice. I am also partial to the Turkish pastrami known as bastarma, a highly smoked and chewy red meat that comes either smothered in fresh tomato sauce or spread like a pizza topping across a tray
smeared with cuminy hummus.

The phyllo-wrapped borek pastries are a treat when they're crisp. Go for the cheese "sigara borek" filled with feta; the spinach boreks were soggy.

If there is a sure bet for this kitchen, it is eggplant, cooked with copious amounts of olive oil and presented in many guises: as cold puree dip called patlican; roasted and stuffed with peppers and pine nuts as an appetizer called "priest fainted." My favorite, though, was the angel sarma, which brought thin sheets of tender eggplant
wrapped around tangy chunks of feta, complemented by a delicate, dill-flecked tomato sauce.

The menu is sprinkled with numerous and amusing parenthetical asides. So with a buildup like "(mom's favorite small fish)," the smelt were hard to pass up. I'm glad we didn't. The little fish came headless and crisp, like sea-flavored potato wedges we ate with bones and all.

Another unlikely seafood success was the skewered mussels, which arrived on their metal shish deep-fried, surprisingly tender, with the mild sweetness of battered seafood pudding.

The mussels boded well for Konak's strongest suit: an array of meat kabobs that are uniformly satisfying. The combo platter offers a decent selection of the basics - tender lamb, cuminy ground beef kofta, and chicken morsels that are juicy from their milk- and onion-juice marinade.

For that true Istanbul street-food effect, there is nothing quite like a donor kabob, the Turkish-style gyro that brings thin, heat-charred slices of milk-marinated lamb and veal. My preferred variation on that theme, however, is the iskender kabob, which mounds a hearty serving of donor meat over a bed of butter-soaked pita bread in tomato sauce, then tops it all off with a dollop of thick, homemade Turkish yogurt.

A more elaborate kabob called darulzisa, based on an old Ottoman Empire recipe, brought a delicately spiced blend of ground chicken, beef, lamb and pistachio molded into phyllo-wrapped medallions that were charred on the grill. It was like a delightful cross between Turkish meat loaf and beef Wellington.

Konak's kitchen had less consistent success with some of its other entrees. The lamb shank was surprisingly greasy and lacking in flavor. The Pasha special brought simmered lamb chops crowned with tinsely party hats, but they were underwhelming for the price ($22). The whole striped bass was a little on the puny side. But it was
still delicious, with an unusual sweet and sour pomegranate glaze that came reasonably close to its immodest parenthetical description: "(the best sauce you've ever tasted)."

I can't concur with the menu's proclamation of the baklava as "(Best of Best)." There weren't enough layers of nuts for me. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover nuts and raisins tucked into the hollow of the poached pear. And the rich caramelized pudding called kazandibi grew on me.

There was no hesitation, however, when I bit into those succulent orange puffs of apricots glazed in syrup, dabs of whipped cream, and nuts. The sweet fruit had been rehydrated to the point where it almost tasted fresh, plucked at the height of ripeness in the Anatolian sun. The evil eye had blessed our meal, indeed.